Klein Weighs Options For His Next Career Move

ANTHONY MAN COMMENTARY

Ron Klein's future is one of the biggest political questions in Palm Beach County. No one, perhaps not even Klein, knows what he'll do next.

The Boca Raton lawyer just finished two years as Florida Senate minority leader and is beginning his last two years in Tallahassee, where he's served since 1992.

Term limits prevent him from seeking re-election to the Senate in 2006, but at age 47 he isn't at all close to finishing his political career.

Finding an office is so important that Klein even mused for a while last year about the prospect of running for sheriff, hoping to replicate Ken Jenne, who went from the Legislature to amass immense political power as Broward County's sheriff.

Some options already are out. The attempt to create the position of a strong countywide mayor, a job Klein could have run for, fizzled.

He'd love to go to Congress, but that option appears likely to lie fallow for years.

There's no indication that U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, is going anywhere.

The other possibility is the seat held by U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fort Lauderdale. But Shaw may become chairman of the most important House committee, Ways and Means, in two years, putting him in charge of taxes, Social Security, Medicare and trade.

Stepping away while the chairmanship is a possibility seems inconceivable.

Though Klein wouldn't rule out challenging Shaw, it seems unlikely. The district has become less attractive for Democrats; President Bush won 51 percent of the votes there last year.

That leaves statewide office. He's contemplated attorney general. More recently, he's sounded like a candidate for state chief financial officer, which includes the oversight of the insurance industry.

Klein's main issue for the upcoming legislative session is -- voila, insurance -- something bound to generate public interest because of last year's hurricanes.

He said the recent decision of state Sen. Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, not to seek the finance post could help because the county establishment wouldn't have to choose between them.

There's one more scenario that deals with term limits and keeps Klein in public office.

Though he has to leave the Senate because of term limits, he could always run for state House, serve briefly, and make a bid to return to the Senate.

The trouble with that idea is that Democrats in the Republican-dominated House are the most irrelevant force in the Capitol, not a position Klein would like to occupy.

Klein said he would make a decision sometime in the next "few" months.

Plea for unity

Wahid Mahmood's supporters turned out in force and preached unity Thursday at the first Democratic Party meeting since he ousted Carol Ann Loehndorf as county chairman.

"If you want to point and cry and call names, it's up to you. We will not have a Democratic governor," County Commissioner Burt Aaronson said. "Bury the hatchet not in each other's backs but in the Republicans' backs."

That was easy for Mahmood's backers to say.

More significant were the public declarations of admiration and affection between Mahmood and Pat Emmert, president of the Palm Beach-Treasure Coast AFL-CIO.

She'd nominated Loehndorf for re-election in a chairmanship fight that pitted South County Democrats and club presidents against labor and Democrats from the north.

In a symbolic break from the past -- and in a nod to his South County base -- Mahmood abandoned the Governmental Center in West Palm Beach and moved the monthly party meetings south to Park Vista Community High School west of Boynton Beach.

It also happens to be more convenient for the new chairman, who lives west of Lake Worth.

The new party office in Lantana also will be more convenient than driving to West Palm Beach.

It'll be a hike for Joan Joseph of Jupiter. Another Mahmood move was hiring her for the long-dormant job of party executive director. Joseph, 59, was statewide volunteer coordinator for John Kerry's presidential campaign and county coordinator for Bill McBride's unsuccessful 2002 gubernatorial run.